???? Weeknote 19/2016

Inspired by the newsletters of Dan Hon, Christian Payne, and Warren Ellis I’ve tried something different for this week’s update. I’ve even used an emoji in the title of this post to be down with the kids. ????

Monday

07:56
I’m sitting at the table in the kitchen/diner drinking camomile tea and listening to BBC 6 Music playing one of the tracks from Radiohead’s new album. I read a great post this morning about the how the band take their time to develop songs, meaning that fans hear iterations over the course of years, if not decades. The emotional resonance of songs changes of time with repeated listening, maturity, and life events we experience. The equivalent for me would be tracks by Massive Attack, Oasis, and Jamiroquai – although just in terms of the album versions, not with demos turning into songs performed live, turning into tracks on an album.

I’m very much enjoying listening to BBC 6 Music. We made the decision to get out the DAB digital radio we had stowed away since we moved house a couple of years ago. As Lauren Laverne (one of the DJs) mentioned in a post this morning, while we live in an age of information abundance, sometimes it’s good not to know, and not to choose what’s coming next. I particularly enjoyed her mention of “playing charity-shop roulette” with her reading material.

I’ve now been off alcohol and coffee for over a week, and I have to say it feels good. Of course, this has coincided with May bringing much better weather to my corner of the UK. I appreciate stability in life as it allows me to choose where to mix things up a bit, both in terms of the things I do physically (e.g. going up mountains) and the places I go mentally (i.e. new ideas).

I’ve got a couple of meetings today, but I try to take it easy one day between Monday and Friday each week. That’s usually a Friday but, because of the Thinking Digital conference I’m down in London at the end of this week. So this day will be all about going out for lunch with my wife, enjoying the sunshine, catching up with the ‘unread newsletters’ email folder, and editing the 50th episode of Today In Digital Education (TIDE), the weekly podcast I record with Dai Barnes.

Wednesday

08:01
I’m on the train on the way to the Thinking Digital conference (#TDC16). I went to the conference dinner last night and serendipitously sat next to a guy from the Co-op Digital team. We started off talking about weareopen.coop, a new co-operative consortium that I and a few friends / ex-Mozillians have set up recently but quickly moved onto to discussing all sorts of other things, including philosophy, shared connections, and so on.

The great thing about this conference in particular is that it gets me out of my filter bubble, but in a way that still remains directly relevant to what I do. The venue is The Sage in Gateshead, a beautiful building both inside and out. The acoustics are amazing, and the room with the main stage is wonderfully intimate. I bought an early bird ticket as soon as they were released last year.

At the moment I’m listening to Seth Godin’s Startup School which is a free podcast series released in 2012. You can search for it on any podcast client. Each episode is 15 minutes to 30 minutes long and contains such great advice from recordings made during a face-to-face summit Seth held that cost a lot of money. It’s worth even just listening to the first one about the important difference between being a freelancer and an entrepreneur. But the whole thing is exceptional and will bear repeated listens. I’m getting a lot out of it.

Thursday

08:54
I was up at 05:15 this morning to head to London. Arriving at the train station in Morpeth, the 06:37 train was cancelled. The train afterwards was massively delayed, so I went home instead of standing on the platform for over an hour. Right now, I’m sitting waiting at Newcastle station for the delayed 08:59 train to London. Delays like these is why working from home is so awesome.

The Thinking Digital conference yesterday was great. I met some really interesting people and the talks, while not uniformly amazing, were so varied that I was hooked even if the presenter got in the way of the content. There was everything from how IBM manage to provide real-time data from Wimbledon, through to the ways technology has helped us identify the ways the microbiome in our human gut can affect our mental health!

I skipped the after-party as I had to get home to watch Sunderland thrash Everton 3-0 to stay in the Premier League. It was a magnificent performance and I accurately the score before the game started! I’m not a betting man, and there’s only my family to back me up, so you’ll just have to trust me on that…

Today it’s going to be a glorious 24°C in London, if the BBC weather forecast can be believed. That’s probably another thing the Tories want to cut along with the 11,000 recipes that BBC Food provide. It comes to something when the worst thing about the country you live in is your government. Needless to say I, and no-one that I know, voted for them.

Friday

12:31
I’m sitting at a table in Ask For Janice a wonderful café / bar around the corner from my client’s offices (City & Guilds). As usual I’ve had the avocado on toast with spiced ricotta and pomegranate molasses. It’s amazing!

I’m working on some hush-hush stuff with City & Guilds at the moment (to be revealed soon!) as well as helping them with upcoming events. One of these is the Festival of Skills for which City & Guilds are the headline partner. It’s going to be a bit an Open Badges extravaganza! Bryan Mathers and I will be doing all sorts of stuff, including building on our OB101 course.

I’ve now moved onto an extremely chocolatey brownie. Well, if I’m not having coffee or alcohol this month, I’m not avoiding sugar, too!

17:45
Now in the newly-refurbished lounge at Kings Cross reclining while typing this into my Chromebook Pixel. I’m listening to the Stone Roses as their new track All For Onecame out today. I hope there’s a new album! I’m amazed a reunion has happened given the animosity of the split, and the biting follow-ups (e.g. the lyrics to Ian Brown’s Corpses In Their Mouths). I don’t care what The Guardian say about the track, it’s exciting!

This afternoon, from about 4pm onwards, I kind of fell down BetaList. It’s literally just a list of new startups or services that are currently in ‘beta’. But because I haven’t visited the site for ages I went about 20 pages deep. There’s so much cool stuff in there! I found Selfism, GretaScript, EverSeller, and Hippo (to name but a few).

I’ve just had to fire off an email to a client informing them that, no, I can’t really do an all-day workshop in a basement room with no natural light. Given that they’ll probably use fluorescent tubes down there, the energy will be low both in terms of lighting and human participation. Also, I’m likely to get a migraine. I’ve asked if, at the very least, they can book some break-out rooms for short periods of time.

Next week

On Monday I’m heading to London to spend part of the afternoon with NCUB, then staying down to work with City & Guilds from Tuesday to Thursday. On Friday I’ll be in Cambridge. So away all week with no ‘Doug day’. The week after I’ll be away for four days as well. Oh well, this is a busy time of the year…